Disciplinary decisions now vetted before release
The RCMP’s top brass are requiring disciplinary decisions related to misbehaving Mounties be vetted first for certain sensitive materials before they can be released to the media, even though these reports were typically released unredacted for years, newly released documents show.
The new protocol, approved by the force’s senior executive committee in summer 2012, went against the advice of Canada’s information commissioner, according to an RCMP briefing note obtained by Postmedia News under access-toinformation legislation.
A senior RCMP official said Friday that the protocol is still evolving and that information withheld from reports are limited and “not consequential to the decision or the readability of the decision.”
“I don’t think that the changes are particularly far-reaching,” said Chief Supt. Stephen Thatcher of the RCMP’s adjudicative services branch.
Since about 2000, RCMP adjudication boards — the three-member panels that hold disciplinary hearings — typically released “unvetted” copies of their decisions and related hearing materials, such as exhibits, the briefing note states. The quasi-judicial hearings themselves are generally open to the public.
But in July 2012, two months after the CBC requested dozens of disciplinary decisions, a “new protocol” came into effect that requires all decisions to be “edited” to remove references to such things as undercover operations or projects, national security interests and in-camera hearings, as well as to children and victims.
Further, reporters wanting copies of other materials, such as transcripts and exhibits, need to file formal access-to-information requests.
The new protocol “strikes a suitable and defendable balance between the ‘open-courts’ principle and freedom of the press on the one hand, and the integrity of law enforcement and privacy interests on the other,” the briefing note states.
While the office of the federal privacy commissioner was OK with these changes, the office of the access-to-information commissioner took a “contrary position,” the document said.
The office of Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault was unable to elaborate on those concerns Friday.
Thatcher said the changes came about because of “a number” of privacy complaints related to the media’s publishing of disciplinary decisions and after the force looked at what other police agencies’ practices were.
All the force is trying to do is to protect privacy interests of participants who take part in disciplinary hearings — especially civilian witnesses whose identities are not critical to understanding the key facts and findings of a case, Thatcher said.
Members of the public can still attend the vast majority of disciplinary hearings, he added.
“We’re just taking steps, after the fact, to reduce the privacy impact on them.”